Thread by @Vic_Rollison

Lots of people are discussing Labor’s victory in SA and analysing what went right for Labor and what went wrong for Liberals. Here are my thoughts as someone ‘on the ground’. A thread👇🏻

Labor’s campaign started almost immediately after they lost government. Peter Malinauskas and all Labor MPs did a ‘Labor listening’ tour, visiting each electorate to meet voters and find out what they want from government.

Labor also worked hard on policy development and made huge commitments a long way out from the election. These commitments weren’t just released via media and then forgotten about. Each had a dedicated campaign.

For example, in 2019, when Liberals broke their promise not to privatise anything by selling trams and trains, Labor opposed the privatisation and committed to buying them back. This included campaigning with rallies and handing out at train stations. Campaigning like an election

Another one was Labor’s hydrogen + manufacturing policy. This was accompanied by a campaign that included letterboxing targeted areas with a hugely detailed policy brochure to help sell the idea to voters. The election campaign has been going for four years.

These are two major examples, and there are many more smaller ones that were campaigns where Labor advocated for people hurt by Liberal policies. For instance, a campaign to retain taxi vouchers for people living with disability after they fell through the NDIS cracks.

Through all these campaigns, Labor worked in concert with the union movement. Best example of this was the more recent campaign to better fund and resource ambulances, which were so stripped of funding that the system buckled under covid pressure, and ramping was costing lives.

Throughout covid, Labor did not take the grubby path of the Victorian Liberals by opposing health policies for political gain. Bipartisanship through the crisis meant Lib govt didn’t have to fight a war on two fronts and could do what was needed to keep people safe.

The other important thing Labor did which was a key reason they won is they preselected candidates in key seats more than two years before the election. In the four most marginal Lib seats - King, Adelaide, Elder and Newland, candidates have been actively campaigning for 2 years.

These four seats are now safe Labor seats. All won by energetic young women who worked so hard - thousands of doors knocked, phoning and letterboxing for months on end. Each seat had tens of committed volunteers who helped their candidates with voter contact. So much work!

SA has spending caps on campaigns which helps to level the playing field. Labor has always had more volunteers to do ‘free’ work, whereas traditionally Liberals would just outspend on costs like mailing out materials rather than volunteers putting them in letterboxes.

So that brings me to what went wrong for the Liberals. I would say they ran a ‘bad’ campaign but truth is they didn’t run a campaign at all. They thought they didn’t need to and then spent the last few weeks panicking when the polls freaked them out.

I need to go back in history to explain how Libs came to believe they don’t need to campaign. Remember Labor was in power for four terms under Mike Rann and Jay Weatherill. While Labor built a progressive legacy - particularly policies like renewables - Libs were just negative.

Steven Marshall as opposition leader was your typical Abbott-like negative-whinger. He used to get called ‘Mr No’. Every time Labor govt made any announcement, Marshall got his head on TV opposing it. Just for the sake of it. No positivity. Just no, no, no, no, no.

Some particularly memorable ‘no-ing’ was when Labor govt supported redevelopment of Adelaide Oval, Marshall opposed. The oval was always much loved in SA and is now even more so. Also SA’s giant battery and virtual power plant - Marshall opposed. Just for the sake of it.

Marshall always used this negativity - like obsessively - to bash Labor about the number of young people who leave Adelaide. This ‘brain drain’ narrative is simplistic rubbish - every small city in the world loses young people to bigger cities. But Marshall just bashed away at it

All this negativity was successful I guess for Marshall because it culminated in Libs winning govt, partly with a handy redistribution, in 2018. But the thing is, with all this negativity and whinging, the Libs were never called on to actually have an agenda for the state.

Like all Liberal govts, the SA Liberals didn’t actually want to use the power of govt to do anything positive for the public, but instead just wanted to spend their time cutting services and trying to destroy the progressive policies left as legacies of the Labor govt.

That’s what they immediately did, and immediately received public backlash for it. For example, they tried to close three Service SA centres to save money (where you go for car rego and licence). Labor campaigned with a huge petition for weeks and Libs backflipped.

Turns out, South Australians don’t much like governments who exist to destroy government. And that’s why Labor won. Because for past four years, Labor have reminded the public they’re happier with Labor in power. That’s also why the Libs’ last minute election panic didn’t work.

This panic campaign was your typical bread and butter Liberal scare campaign they attack Labor with every election in every state and federally (Bill Australia can’t afford) - that Labor spends too much and puts state in debt. This invoice is example, same message all over booths

The voters saw this message, heard it constantly on the radio and saw it all over social media, and then swung hard to Labor. Do you know why? They know they pay tax under any govt - Lib and Labor - but under Labor they aren’t scared an ambulance won’t turn up when they need it.

Last thing I wanted to say is you can’t underestimate how important the charisma of the leader is. Call it what you like - X-factor, likability, trust - Peter Malinauskas has it. He’s impossible not to like. He speaks like a leader and he connects with people. That’s all folks 👍🏻